Give a meal.
Change a life.
Just $2.65 is enough to provide a Christmas meal for someone in need in Santa Barbara.
Their Last Hope.
Right now, we have neighbors who are hungry, homeless, addicted, and trapped in despair.
For many people, the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission is their last stop. Their last hope. Their last chance.
With the support of people like you, each year we can:
A Meal is MORE than Food
At Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, meals are more than just food on a plate. Watch Rolf, the Mission’s president, talk about what meals at the Mission really are, and what they mean.
Only One Rescue Mission
In my 17 years of law enforcement service, I have often come into contact with society’s outcasts –– drunks, drug addicts, street people, prostitutes, vagrants, and petty criminals. For years, our approach was simply to arrest and incarcerate these people. Nail ‘em and jail ‘em, as the saying goes. The problem was that the same people kept coming back to the streets, and then getting sent back to jail. It was a seemingly endless cycle, but what else could we do? We discovered we needed partnerships, like our partnership with the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission. The Rescue Mission is what every community needs desperately –– a place where broken lives can be rebuilt.
– Bill Brown, Santa Barbara County Sheriff
Van has played dozens of roles as an actor, including Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street. But if it weren't for friends like you, he never would have had his own miracle here on Yanonali Street.
Miracle on Yanonali Street
Van wasn’t very old when he decided he wanted to go into the family business and become an actor. But unfortunately, a love for theater wasn’t the only thing his family taught him.
“I learned to bartend when I was 11,” he says. “I started drinking and drugging when I was around 13.”
Van finished high school and started taking acting classes. After finishing school and going on several auditions, he was hired for roles in two movies. He was thrilled and went to celebrate with friends at a local bar.
“I was walking across Sunset Boulevard, heading home, and I got hit by a car,” Van says.
He was thrown about 40 feet and was injured so badly he had to turn down the movie roles. But he still kept drinking, barely making ends meet for years. One night, the hopelessness he’d been trying to chase away with alcohol wouldn’t leave.
“I ended up holding a knife to my throat,” Van says.
Thankfully, Van put the knife down and called his cousin who took him to the hospital. At the hospital, Van heard about the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission and our programs here.
“On November 19th, 2014, I walked into Santa Barbara Rescue Mission, and my life changed,” Van says. “I knew I was in the right place right away.”
Ten years later, Van is still sober and still has the job he got through the help of our staff in the Learning Center. He’s got his own apartment, and in his spare time, he acts as much as he can. He’s even had the opportunity to play Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street!
Together we will make a difference
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“God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through Him.”
– John 3:17 (NLT)
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Santa Barbara Rescue Mission
535 E. Yanonali Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93103
Email: rescuemissionnews@sbrm.org
Phone: 805-966-1316
Fax: 805-966-7495
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